A WEEK ago, we were told to economise on electricity because our power stations could not cope with the demand and there would be power cuts. This week, we were told to economise on our water use because “in a few weeks there will be no water left in our reservoirs, only mud.”
What will we have to economise on next week? Going to the toilet perhaps, because our sewage system is only capable of coping with 1,000 mega-tons of s**t per day and anything in excess of this would cause major blockages and the overflow of house toilets?
People who have gardens could always dig holes and use those when nature calls more than once a day, but for those who live in flats things are not quite as simple. If they have a cat, they could use the cat litter and refrain from consuming food that becomes nauseatingly smelly after it has been broken down and ejected by the human body. A list of the recommended food will probably be published by the Health Ministry in association with Limassol Sewage Board.
The other alternative would be to use medication that causes constipation, even though this option might be harmful to your health if pursued until next year, when the additional two pipes are installed in the sewage system so it can cope with all the waste being flushed down the toilet.
READERS may be thinking I am exaggerating to make a point, but is there anyone who would lay a big bet against this ever happening, given our authorities’ comical inability to make plans for anything beyond three months ahead.
Add to this the talent for pitiful organisational skill and it becomes clear why everything undertaken by the state services has ‘potentially certain disaster’ written all over it. And when things go wrong, as they invariably do, they implement Plan B – panicking and praying to the Almighty for divine assistance.
At the height of the heat wave, the Electricity Authority was advising people not to over-use their air-conditioning units because it was unable to produce adequate power to cope with the demand and if people failed to comply there would be power cuts. It presented this as a perfectly reasonable request; after all we were still allowed to keep the fridge on.
Sure guys, we won’t use our AC units when it is 44 degrees outside and houses are like a hamam. We will turn them off and only put them back on again in December when the power stations can cope with the demand for electricity. It was socially irresponsible to turn on the AC during the hottest days of the year, when we should have known that our grid would not be able to cope.
When demand became too high, and selective power cuts had to be made, the Authority decided to make the holidays of thousands of foreign tourists more memorable by switching off the AC units of hotels for several hours. That would certainly have given a much-needed boost to repeat tourism numbers.
AS FOR THE H2O shortages, I know we waste quite a bit of it by having a shower every day, washing dirty dishes and hosing down the pavements, the drives, our cars, the walls and the concrete in the so-called gardens.
But what households waste is nothing compared to the mega-tons used by spoilt farmers, who grow water-intensive crops like water melons, but are never told to economise, in case they get angry and block the Rizoelia roundabout or the airport runway on a day when Cyprus Airways pilots are not threatening a strike.
Seventy per cent of our water resources are used by farmers, who contribute four per cent of GDP; and they pay a subsidised rate. Despite Agriculture Ministry pleas to water their crops in the evening and minimise waste, they insist on watering during the day when half the water turns into vapour. Then we are told not to hose down the pavements, because in a few months there will only be mud left in the reservoirs.
THE FACT that we still have water to shower is a small miracle if you consider the incompetence that marks the management of resources by lazy state officials.
The previous government, which had to adopt Plan B after an extended drought, eventually decided to go against character and do some planning for desalination plants.
It built two and planned a third off Limassol which was meant to have been completed this year, residents of the area, who were afraid it would affect real estate prices, permitting.
The Ethnarch’s government, aware that everything done by its predecessor was bad for the country, shelved the plan for a third plant, and decided that it would meet water needs by getting civil servants to do a rain dance when things became desperate. Unfortunately the dance did not produce any rain and on Wednesday the Agriculture Minister issued his warning that unless we saved water, in a few months residents of the Paphos area would be showering with mud.
He also said that too much water was wasted on sports grounds, carefully avoiding mention of the real water guzzlers – golf courses. The government has given the go-ahead to the creation of 14 golf courses as part of its water conservation drive.
ON WEDNESDAY, when our government realised that severe water shortages were imminent, it decided the idea for a third desalination plant, even though it belonged to the previous government, was not so bad. The only problem was that three years would be needed for it to start pumping desalted water and in that time, if the rain dances failed to produce heavy rainfall, there would not even be mud left in the reservoirs.
As a stop-gap measure, a mobile desalination plant would be in place next year, to cover the Limassol district’s water needs, at significant cost. But I am sure that if we have a couple of months’ good rainfall this winter, the plans will be put on hold until the next drought is on the horizon.
AT LEAST the decision for a fourth unit at the Vassiliko power station was not abandoned. It was delayed by a year – it should have been ready this summer – as a result of the obligatory cock-up in the tenders’ procedure. The state services can never organise a tenders’ procedure that goes smoothly.
There is always some legal dispute once the board decides which company to given the contract to. Often the whole procedure has to be done from the beginning because some inept civil servant forgot to include basic information in the specs or wrote them in such a way that only one company could win the contract, thus sparking legal rows.
After a meeting on Friday with Communications Minister Antonis Michaelides, who has turned into quite a heroic anti-union campaigner, the Electricity Authority board (EAC) not only gave assurances to have the fourth unit (it will produce an extra 130MW) ready on May 1, but would also come up with proposals for securing an additional 60MW.
It did this because it feared the government would sign a deal with a private company to produce 50MW of power, and the EAC board, which is a bastion of Akelite communists committed to monolithic state monopolies, is determined to bar the entry of private companies into the energy sector. This is the only reason it is opposed to an offshore LNG unit (it would be privately-owned) and demands the control of an onshore unit if it is ever built.
Michaelides, who, to his credit, is greatly detested by the commies of the EAC, because he supports private initiative and refuses to be intimidated by the fascistic union, should not be fooled by the board’s stalling tactics. What will he do if the unit is not ready on time and the extra 60 MW has not been secured because of a cock-up in the tenders’ procedure, assuming that he is still minister? Sack the board or take legal action against the Authority demanding compensation?
Any punitive measures against the board will be scant consolation to the public, if they still cannot turn their ACs on next July, because the fourth unit was not ready and demand for
power increased by another 10 per cent.
WHAT you see is not the result of montage or photo-shop doctoring – it is authentic, the real McCoy, kosher. If you have not recognised the woman in the centre – it is our foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulli, kitted out in traditional Cyprus folk costume and posing as a choriatopoulla. Apparently this was the attire worn by Karpass peasants (this is what we were told).
The picture was not taken before some fancy-dress party at the Cyprus embassy, but was taken to be used as a Christmas card sent out by Erato when she was an ambassador. One Cypriot Foreign Minister kept it on his desk for much longer than you would keep a normal Xmas card because it always made him smile.
The four ‘choriatopoulles’ at the front were not flown in from a Cyprus village but were embassy staff made to wear the traditional costume, presumably so that Erato would not be the only person looking ridiculous on the card. However, they are wearing a different costume from the ambassador, so that she could stand out as the lady of the village.
She should wear the outfit the next time she visits Brussels on official business as it would win her a lot of sympathy from her colleagues – and nobody would notice the eye-brows which are in perfect harmony with the folk costume.
WELL IT was just as well we apologised last week about our inaccurate claims, re our foreign minister’s allegedly sinful, pro-A-plan past. Other columnists continued to make the same claim, prompting Erato to issue a strong-worded statement, accusing them of “conveying gossip” as well as “lying and mud-slinging”.
She explained that after the referendum she worked with all her powers to contribute to the “concerted effort to quash the aims of Turkey and other international circles which wanted to hurt our side.” She then bored us by repeating everything the Ethnarch has been saying with regard to the settlement he wants. So fanatically faithful has she become to the great leader’s line that one columnist has been referring to her, quite appropriately, as Tassoula.
WE HAD planned to welcome back the Neanderthal DIKO official Nick the Pitts to the political scene today, but it seems his return was very short-lived. After four days in the limelight, during which he launched some deliciously vicious assaults on AKEL, he returned to Paphos obscurity.
The palazzo’s communications advisor decided that he caused more harm than good to the Ethnarch’s re-election prospects and he was told to cut the public appearance. It was a great shame because Pitts had single-handedly breathed life into the flagging campaign, boosted the ratings of the TV news shows and pissed off the Akelite camp big-time.
I suspect he will be unleashed again, as the elections approach, the campaign gets dirty and the Tassos camp tries to recreate the referendum spirit.
ANOTHER media fruitcake returned to the limelight last week – retired counsel of the Republic and staunch Akelite, Akis Papasavvas, who will cause harm to the Commissar’s election prospects by publicly campaigning for him. In an article written for the 30th anniversary of Makarios’ death, Papasavvas provided the blueprint for the Left’s ascension to power.
“The Leftist, struggling, Makarios-inspired course should be a combination of the following disparate qualities: the life-long commitment to resistance by the immortal Makarios, the ethos of Che Guevara, the ingenuity of Fidel Castro, the humanity of [Greek Communist] Beloyiannis and the suicidal obstinacy of [murderous Greek communist guerrilla leader] Aris Velouchiotis.”
He forgot to mention one quality for the true – the literary talent of Papasavvas.
LAST MONDAY, the three-member arbitration committee set up by the Council of Ministers to resolve the ongoing dispute between the National Bank of Greece and the bank employees union ETYK had its first meeting. One of the members of the committee was the retired Central Bank Governor Ttooulis of Avgorou.
How the NBG agreed to have him on the committee, given his close ties with ETYK boss Loizos Hadjicostis defies belief. Ttooulis’ daughter and the ETYK-head are business partners, both owning shares in the company that offers courses to bank employees. Also, they are both close friends of the Marfin-Laiki’s head honcho, Andreas Vgenopoulos.
Even more interesting was to see that the lawyer representing ETYK was Antenna’s supreme ruler, Loukis P, who also happens to be the lawyer of Vgen and Marfin-Laiki. Apart from working for both a bank and a bank union as legal advisor, my good friend Loukis is also a bosom buddy of the committee member Ttooulis of Avgorou.
The odds may seem stacked against NBG, but I am sure the committee will give it a say before it reaches a decision.
POSITIVE 9: THE appointment of Antonis Michaelides as Communications Minister was an inspired choice. For once the Republic has a minister who is not afraid to take on militant unions, talk disparagingly of them in public and show contempt for their arrogant bullying. Michaelides relishes a confrontation with the union barons, unlike all other ministers who bow to them. Here is a minister who behaves like a man, completely disregarding the negative press he has received because he has dared to stand up to the union fascists.
OMIROU 7: Yiannakis Omirou exposed AKEL’s sinful past. “I do not want to go back to 1960 and say who had co-operated with whom against Archbishop Makarios”. We’ll say it, as Omirou was too scared to do so. In the 1960 elections, the commies had backed Makarios’ opponent, which is another compelling reason for voting for Tassos in February.
